The oxygen supplier, Grissom said, "came and said they had been instructed to remove the tanks. I was furious. If I had died then, I probably would have been on the phone with my attorney when I was taking my last breath."

Stories such as Grissom's have become commonplace on the Senate floor, where lawmakers are debating legislation to give patients the right to sue their HMOs. The bill, authored by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and John Edwards (D-N.C.), has sparked a parade of photographs and mementos from patients with similar sagas to tell.

Putting a human face on a subject to make political points is a well-established strategy. Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, said that using average Americans' horror stories has become "the norm, not the exception."

Grissom, like most patients, will not name his health maintenance organization, fearing legal and other repercussions.

On the other side, HMO industry representatives complain it is unfair for politicians to cite examples the industry can't specifically rebut.

Republican opponents of the bill say the emotion evoked by the horror stories of real people who are denied care obscures the point of this legislation.

Issue isn't protecting patients

"That's a red herring," said Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who opposes the measure. "The issue here isn't protecting patients -- we can do that, guaranteed. This issue is an increase in lawsuits and costs, and employers being affected by that. A lot of people are going to be uninsured, and then you're really going to have a lot of horror stories."

A study conducted from 1990 to 1997 by Harvard University researchers and the Blue Cross-Blue Shield Association found that, overall, hospitalization and medical procedure denials by HMOs were few.. Denial of coverage on a first-round request was less than 6 percent for all forms of care surveyed, including surgical procedures, referrals to a specialist of the patient's choice and hospitalizations. The overall denial rate of those procedures was 3 percent or less.

"Any number of times there is more to the [patient's] story than is being told," said Susan Pisano, vice president of communications at the American Association of Health Plans, which represents HMOs. "We favor independent review by physicians that are at an arm's length. ... It makes sense to have that kind of protection to prevent there from being stories to tell."

But stories there are, and Democratic senators came to the debate last week armed with anecdotes--some of them even personal in nature.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) said his in-laws had a bad experience with an HMO in rural Oklahoma when they were denied access to an emergency room.

"I don't know that there's a family that hasn't been affected by an HMO" in some way, he said.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) spoke of a neighbor in Chappaqua, N.Y., Dr. Thomas Lee, a neurosurgeon at Northern Westchester Hospital Center. Lee performed an emergency operation free of charge because his patient's HMO wouldn't allow him to do it otherwise.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) stood on the Senate floor in front of a color photo of 3-year-old Roberto Cortes of northwest suburban Elk Grove Village, Ill., who has spinal muscular atrophy. Durbin told a story of pain, suffering and frustration.

"His doctor said this little boy needs [a special drug] to protect him against an infection when he is on a respirator, and the health insurance company said no," Durbin said. "It was tough enough for his family to get up every morning and fight for his life, but then to go to the telephones and fight for his insurance -- that's just unacceptable."

Critical details omitted

HMO advocacy groups are quick to counter that frequently patients, and lawmakers, leave out critical details when retelling these heart-wrenching tales. Further, they maintain that such stories often are exaggerated.

The groups also note that the patients' unwillingness to name their health-care providers denies the HMOs the opportunity to respond and defend their positions. What's more, privacy laws restrict insurers from commenting on a patient's care or health problems unless given permission by the patient.

Nevertheless, said Stephen Moore, president of the taxpayer advocacy group the Club for Growth, the trend is growing of politicians ushering people into the spotlight to tell their personal stories.

"It has gotten much worse" recently, he said. "Often what you have is public policy being driven by anecdote, and often it is bad public policy."